A Fragmented History: Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Cuttings

The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic shift in the treatment of illuminated manuscripts from how they were regarded when first made: from adoration to alteration. Medieval manuscripts were seen as curiosities to be cut up and became dismembered and the parts scattered as a result.

Introductory Video

Video Transcript

Manuscript Cuttings: Devotion through the Ages

Manuscripts remained intact for centuries; they endured wars, the Reformation and being passed down through generations – only to meet their match at the hands of the Victorians. Why did the 19th century’s greatest art-lovers become history’s most notorious biblioclasts? Let’s uncover the truth…

How would you feel if I cut up this book? Probably shocked – possibly outraged.

This might be a common reaction now, but cuttings were a profitable and pleasurable pastime in the Victorian era, where keen collectors sliced out the beautiful decorative illustrations – called illuminations – from the manuscript in which they belonged. Victorians cut up manuscripts to collect and sell their beautiful illuminations, treating them as trinket pieces of art instead of sacred texts.

The pages left behind, following the cutting of illuminations out of medieval manuscripts, are still of value to museums and art collections. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds manuscript leaves in their collection that show the physical scars of the Victorian craze for cutting.

One striking example is a 15th-century leaf from a Book of Hours from the V&A collections. An obvious square hole gapes where an illumination was cut out, leaving only the text and a decorated initial ‘D’ on the parchment. This missing piece was likely sold as a ‘miniature’, a stand-alone artwork. For Victorians, the value wasn’t always in the text, but in the imagery. Essentially, it was medieval craftsmanship repurposed for decoration.

Compare this to an intact leaf in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts collection, seen here.

This manuscript cutting visualises the Biblical story of the ‘Flight into Egypt’ as recounted in the Gospel of Saint Matthew (2: 13-15). In a dream, an angel warns Joseph that King Herod is a grave danger to the infant Christ, so Joseph takes Mary and the newborn child to Egypt for safety. The scene remains whole, surrounded by detailed marginalia and opulent gold initials.

The difference between the two manuscript cuttings is stark: one page tells a complete story, while the other is a fragment, forever altered by Victorian hands.

Why did this happen? Two key reasons: profit and aesthetics. Dealers made fortunes auctioning off cuttings, while collectors framed them as art. Even famous figures like art critic John Ruskin justified cutting manuscripts for educational purposes. Meanwhile, the Arts and Crafts and Pre-Raphaelite and movements, led by William Morris and Birmingham’s Edward Burne Jones, celebrated medieval designs, and in referencing them in their own work, turned them into fashionable motifs rather than sacred texts.

Not everyone approved. Religious movements such as the Tractarian movement believed it was right to preserve the manuscripts as they were. However, most Victorians saw the books as relics of a romantic past – beautiful, but not untouchable.

Today, this decimation of artefacts — and their repurposing — poses difficult questions. Should we be grateful these cuttings survived at all? Or are we horrified by what was lost by the cutting process?
Modern museums now face their own ethical dilemmas. Digital reunification projects try to piece fragments back together virtually, while conservators debate whether to restore damaged pages or leave the cuts visible as historical evidence.

The Victorians weren’t alone in reshaping the past to fit their present. We still grapple with the same tensions: Is it preservation when we digitise manuscripts, or just another kind of alteration?

The story of these illuminated manuscripts continues to evolve: from the medieval world that made them, through the Victorian hands that cut and reframed them – to the present-day where we display, digitally manipulate, film and re-present the cuttings and manuscripts. Every generation that has interacted with the manuscripts has left its mark – this exhibition explores their legacy.

Many continental European religious institutions, such as monasteries and cathedrals, were dissolved following the French Revolution of 1789 and consequently their property was distributed among secular society. As a result of this dispersion of religious material, items such as books of hours and choir books came to be owned by private collectors across the world. The language used in medieval religious texts was difficult to understand, yet, despite this, the illuminations were highly valued for their intricate designs and rich colouring and gilding.

The nineteenth century witnessed a growing secular appreciation of medieval art, with illuminated manuscripts becoming prized more for their visual appeal than their religious or textual significance. Collectors treated Books of Hours and choir books as artistic treasures, collectable curiosities, and sources of inspiration for design and craftsmanship. People interacted with the manuscripts in many ways; some would cut out illuminations and tear out complete leaves to then mount them in catalogues. Others made a living as art dealers selling the manuscripts, either as cuttings or as complete copies. They saw medieval manuscripts as sources of decorative art, dismembering them to extract illuminated initials, borders and miniatures.

But not everyone approached them this way. The Tractarian movement (also known as the Oxford Movement) was a nineteenth-century religious revival within the Church of England that looked back to the Middle Ages for spiritual inspiration. Their deep respect for the medieval church sparked a renewed interest in preserving medieval manuscripts as important religious, historical and art objects. Unlike other collectors, Tractarians didn’t cut them up or treat them as mere decoration. Instead, they saw value in studying and protecting them, keeping their devotional and theological significance alive. Still, for many of those outside the Tractarian circle, the sacredness of these books had faded, making it easier to justify treating them as art objects rather than spiritual ones. Cutting them up wasn’t seen as destruction; it was a way to isolate and showcase their beauty, fitting with the era’s fascination with craftsmanship, collecting, and the aesthetics of the medieval revival.

The deliberate dismantling of medieval manuscripts was not merely an aesthetic choice, it was also a lucrative enterprise. Biblioclast is a term that refers to someone who cuts or destroys books, especially religious texts, and in the nineteenth century, many collectors fit this brief. Biblioclasts such as the Italian scholar Guglielmo Libri (1802–1869) exploited their positions as cataloguers to steal and sell individual leaves. Others, such as art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), justified cutting manuscripts for educational purposes, using excised illuminations as teaching tools.

The commercial potential of manuscript cuttings was undeniable. In 1825, Venetian cleric-turned-dealer Abbot Luigi Celotti (1759–1843) organised London’s first auction dedicated solely to illuminated manuscript fragments, setting a precedent for later sales. Buyers often framed cuttings as standalone artworks or assembled them into decorative collages, further divorcing them from their original textual contexts. Among the most notorious biblioclasts was Otto F. Ege (1888–1951), an American academic who systematically dismembered manuscripts to sell individual leaves in specially crafted portfolios. Although his intention was largely pedagogic, he sold portfolios to institutions across America to be used as teaching tools for medieval scripts. His clients demonstrated the widespread desire to possess a piece of medieval artistry, even at the cost of the manuscript’s integrity.

The consequences of the this practice of cutting remain visible today in museum collections, where many medieval leaves bear the scars of nineteenth century interventions. The Victoria and Albert Museum, for instance, holds a fifteenth-century leaf from a Book of Hours (Fig.1) from which an illumination has been cut out, leaving behind only a square void and the surrounding text.

What remains is the historiated initial ‘D’ surrounded by intertwining acanthus leaves that form the border decoration. The gaping hole left in the manuscript now stands in place of the original medieval imagery, as the cutting was likely sold as a ‘miniature’.

A comparison can be made with a cutting in the Barber Institute’s collection, an intact leaf from 1408 featuring a Flight into Egypt, from the Studio of the Master of the Boucicaut Hours (Fig.2).

Unlike its mutilated counterpart, this leaf retains its full composition, with vibrant marginalia and a golden historiated initial ‘D’ still intact on the leaf cutting. Such surviving examples highlight the irreparable damage inflicted by nineteenth-century cutting practices, where the removal of one element permanently altered the manuscript’s historical and artistic narrative.

The nineteenth-century fascination with manuscript cuttings extended beyond physical mutilation; it also spurred industrial and artistic movements dedicated to replicating medieval styles.

The flight into egypt, studio of the master of the boucicaut hours. bifa — **Fig. 2**

The rise of chromolithography allowed for the wider reproduction of illuminations. It was a production technique for multi-coloured printmaking that enabled motifs to be taken and reproduced from medieval manuscripts, further divorcing them from their original contexts. Publishers such as Henry Shaw (1800–1873) and Henry Noel Humphreys (1810–1879) made lavish facsimiles (copies) of medieval manuscripts that focused almost exclusively on their decorative elements.

The ‘House Beautiful’ movement, championed by figures like William Morris (1834-1896), sought to revive medieval craftsmanship.

This was a response to industrialisation that was seen to lack originality. Morris’s Kelmscott Press (1891–98) epitomised this ideal, producing books such as The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1896) (Fig. 3), which emulated the intricate borders and initials of medieval manuscripts.

Yet even these efforts, while celebrating medieval artistry, contributed to the commodification of manuscript aesthetics, treating them as design motifs rather than sacred artifacts.

Meanwhile, the demand for cuttings also gave rise to forgery. The so-called ‘Spanish Forger’, active in late nineteenth-century Paris, capitalised on the market’s appetite for medieval art by creating fraudulent illuminations on parchment. His works, though stylistically inconsistent with genuine medieval pieces, were convincing enough to deceive collectors.

The nineteenth-century treatment of medieval manuscripts raises enduring questions about preservation, ownership, and artistic value. Where medieval scribes and illuminators crafted these books as unified wholes, these later collectors fragmented them, privileging visual appeal over textual and historical continuity and integrity. Today, museums and libraries strive to protect surviving manuscripts from further dismemberment, reflecting a shift towards ethical stewardship.

Yet the nineteenth-century fascination with cuttings also ensured that medieval artistry reached new audiences, inspiring artistic movements and scholarly study. The fragments serve as a testament to the evolving relationship between past and present, reminding us that every cut, every sale, and every reproduction has shaped the manuscript’s journey through history. In examining these practices in our exhibition, we confront not only the biblioclastic tendencies of the past but also our own responsibilities as custodians of cultural heritage.

Charlotte Askew

Image List

Fig. 1 Leaf from a Book of Hours, France (probably Paris), about 1400-25. Pigments on parchment. Victoria and Albert Museum (No. CIRC.78-1909)

Fig. 2 Studio of the Master of the Boucicaut Hours (active 1400-30), Leaf from a Book of Hours with a Miniature of The Flight into Egypt, Paris, 1408. Ink, pigments and gold on vellum, 178 x 132 mm. The Barber Institute of Fine Arts (No. 69.6) (see Manuscript Cutting: Leaf from a Book of Hours with a Miniature showing the Flight into Egypt)

Fig. 3 Edward Burne-Jones (illustrator), William Morris (designer) and William Hooper (engraver), first page of Troilus and Criseyde, Book One, from F. S. Ellis (ed.), The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Morris Press, Kelmscott, 1896. Image supplied courtesy of the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.

A Fragmented History: Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Cuttings

Introductory Video

Manuscript Cuttings: Devotion through the Ages

Image List

Further Reading